Heretofore, in automotive vehicles, a vibration damping technique, so-called “dynamic damper”, has been employed which is intended to reduce vibration and noise in a front portion of a vehicle body arising from vehicle traveling, wherein a member having a certain level of weight and mounted on the front portion of the vehicle body, such as a radiator or a battery, is utilized as an inertial mass, thereby achieving a reduction in vibration and others in the front portion of the vehicle body.
In this technique, when a radiator is utilized as an inertial mass so as to obtain a dynamic damper effect, it is common practice to use a support structure as illustrated in FIG. 7, wherein upper and lower portions of a radiator 101 are mounted, respectively, to two structural members 103, 104 of a vehicle body through a plurality of elastic mounts 102 serving as a spring for absorbing or damping vibrations in vehicle up-down, right-left and front-rear directions.
Meanwhile, as means to improve drivability of an automotive vehicle, particularly, a sporty vehicle, lowering the center of gravity of the vehicle is effective. For this purpose, it is conceivable to reduce a weight of an upper portion of the vehicle body by reducing a plate thickness of a structural member constituting the upper portion.
However, in the above conventional radiator support structure, if a plate thickness of a structural member for supporting the upper portion of the radiator is reduced, radiator supporting rigidity of the structural member is deteriorated, so that the structural member is liable to fail to bear a load, particularly, an upward moving load, of the radiator, resulting in difficulty in sufficiently obtaining the dynamic damper effect.
Further, there has been known a structure in which right and left lateral portions of a radiator are mounted to a vehicle body through a plurality of elastic mounts, as disclosed, for example, in JP 06-055942A. In the conventional structure disclosed in this patent document, one pair of support base plates are disposed in such a manner as to sandwich therebetween opposite lateral portions of a radiator in a vehicle width direction, wherein at least one pair of elastic mounts provided to protrude from the respective lateral portions of the radiator in the vehicle width direction are fittingly inserted, respectively, into at least one pair of support tube portions each provided in a respective one of the support base plates, whereby the radiator is supported by the support base plates through the elastic mounts. Thus, in an operation of mounting the radiator to a vehicle body, it is necessary to install the radiator to the vehicle body, after attaching the support base plates to the respective lateral portions of the radiator. However, during the installation, it is necessary to use a special jig for retaining a posture of the support base plates or the radiator. Thus, the installation of the radiator to the vehicle body has not been easy.